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| Updated: 09-Oct-2003 | NATO Speeches |
| Colorado Springs 8 Oct. 2003 |
Questions and Answers at
the Press Conference
Q: Jamie MacIntyre with CNN. Mr. Secretary, are you at all miffed with Condoleeza Rice over the handling of this NSC memorandum? Rumsfeld: No. Q: And do you believe that the press has mischaracterized the memo and its implications? Rumsfeld: Well, not at all. The task of the NSC is to coordinate among the departments its agencies, that's what its charter is. I was asked if I had happened to have seen it, and the fact is I hadn't seen it, it was apparently at a lower level. I get three or four memos from the NSC a day, and send out
three or four to other agencies. I think with the Chicago Cubs
in the playoffs and what's going on in California, one could
find something more important than that. Q: Laurent Zecchini from Le Monde. Secretary of Defence, you have asked NATO countries to provide more troops in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Until now, the response has been very poor. What does that mean? Does that mean for instance, as one U.S. official said recently, that NATO is in excellent shape and that NATO has fully recovered from the Iraqi crisis? Rumsfeld: Let me just take your question and try to correct it. It may not be easy but... You began by saying the response has been very poor. You're wrong, the response has been excellent. The Secretary of State and the head of the Central Command last year began the process of working with other countries. NATO as well as others went out to something in excess of 100 countries, I believe. And at the present time we have 32 countries in Iraq. Of the NATO nations, there are 19 NATO nations, excluding the United States, there's 18. And we have 11 of those countries currently in Iraq and an additional one announced this week that they intended to offer troops. That would be 12 out of 18. That is not a poor response. Of the NATO Invitees, six of seven are currently in Iraq. So all of this myth about poor response and going it alone is simply that, a myth. Now, what else has happened? NATO has stepped forward and provided assistance to Spain, and the forces of Poland, and some others that are in that multinational division, to help them and assist them in that process. So NATO has responded, I would say, very very well. I should add one thing. The first time the North Atlantic Treaty Organization did anything outside of Europe was right after September 11th here in the United States when they deployed AWACS. The first time NATO has done anything outside of the NATO treaty area was within the last recent weeks, when they took over the responsibility for the International Stabilization Assistance Force in Afghanistan. That is a huge commitment. That is a big thing. The first time in 50-plus years that NATO has undertaken an assignment outside of the treaty area. And it's in Afghanistan. That is to me something that ought to be noted. And I would hope that people would note it, as a significant departure in the past practice of the Alliance. Q: Tom Scuatere with USA Today.
Lord Robertson, last week the Russians announced that they were going
to consider a new
policy on nuclear weapons, that is, including them for the
possible pre-emptive use for terrorist actions and others. Are you concerned that this will be a trend evolving and will this issue be among the discussions tomorrow? Lord Robertson: Well I have no doubt that when Minister Sergey Ivanov comes tomorrow, he'll want to expand on the fairly sketchy details which came out of the meeting that President Putin had with his commanders last week. That is what these NATO-Russia meetings are all about. I spoke to Minister Sergey Ivanov at the end of last week about some of these reports, and he was at pains to tell me that he thought some of the reports bore no relation to what the reality was. So tomorrow will be an excellent opportunity for us to go over some of that, and to hear more information, and perhaps to exchange things as well. We've reached a remarkable level of trust in our relationship with Russia today, and I think that's good news for the world. Q: Mr. Secretary, I wonder if we just might very briefly revisit Iraq. You told reporters, pointedly it seems yesterday, that you were not involved in any discussions on this new White House NSC team with authority over Iraq. Do you not feel, Sir, that perhaps the White House or others in the administration went behind your back to diminish your authority in Iraq? Rumsfeld: Not at all, Charlie. The reality is that the National Security Council's responsibility is to do exactly what this one-page memo says they should do. It happened that it apparently was discussed at the Under Secretary or the Assistant Secretary level, and not at my level. It need not have been. It is not a problem or an issue. The idea that...Think about Iraq, and what's taking place. You've got political activity that's taking place, that the Coalition Provisional Authority is working on, you have the economic activity that's taking place. I think that there are 17 countries participating in the Coalition Provisional Authority with ambassador Bremer. And then you have the security responsibilities. The President made a decision to start it out with Jerry Bremer reporting to me. The implication in the press was that he was going to report to the White House or Condi Rice. As Condi has indicated, that was not the import of the memo, that's not what the memo said, that's not what was intended. We know that that activity, as it matures, will migrate over the Department of State. I mean, that's where ambassadors report. And eventually, it will arrive there at some point. And that would be a decision the President would make at some point. As the task kind of moves less security towards more political and economic, one would think. But I just am really quite surprised about all of this frou fra about this memo. It's a little, short, one-page memo. Q: (inaudible) Rumsfeld: Not that I can see. Q: Jonathan Marcus, BBC. Question for you, Secretary Rumsfeld. Transformation is very much at the top of your agenda, it's now very high on NATO's agenda as well. We see the new Rapid Reaction Force developing and so one. Isn't one of the lessons, though, of fighting in Iraq, that however magnificently transformed a force may be, that however capable it may be of winning light with all the new information technologies and so on, you still, at the end of the day, need significant numbers of soldiers on the ground? And isn't there a danger that one of the by-products of this whole transformational effort will be insufficient boots on the ground to actually carry out the peacekeeping and nation-building missions? Rumsfeld: I guess time will tell. I think that there seems to be a certain category of people who believe more is better in terms of troops. It's not clear that that's the case, either with respect to war-fighting or with respect to post-war stabilization activities. For whatever reason, General Abizaid is consistently receiving information from all of his commanders in Iraq that they not only do not need more forces, they do not want more forces. That they feel more forces would be not helpful, but unhelpful. More forces require more force protection. More forces require more logistics. More forces, U.S. and coalition forces, create the impression of an occupation, they put more of a non-Iraqi face on what's taking place. The number of foreign forces in Afghanistan are relatively modest, as I'm sure you're aware. What's taking place in Iraq today is I think important to understand conceptually. There are three categories of forces. There are U.S. forces, there are coalition forces, and there are Iraqi forces. The Iraqi forces did not exist on May 1st. They started working with the plans that existed to develop Iraqi police force, an Iraqi Army, an Iraqi Site Protection forces, Iraqi civil defence forces, and Iraqi border forces. They have gone from zero to 56 000 Iraqis providing security in Iraq in about three and a half or four months. Another 14 000 have been recruited and are in training. They have projections to dramatically continue the growth in the Iraqis. So what you have is a total number that's here, and portion U.S., portion coalition, and coming up under it is a very large number of Iraqi forces. In my view, that is what ought to be done. The goal of the coalition is not to become the permanent provider of security for that country. Rather, it is to be there for a short period, whatever it takes, assist in getting the Iraqi forces up to speed and armed and equipped and trained so that they can in fact provide for Iraq's security. Which is the job of Iraqis, not of Americans, not of coalition forces, except for a period. And then, allow them to take that over, just as the same thing's true in the political area, where the transition will go from the Coalition Provisional Authority, a transfer of sovereignty over a period of time to the Iraqi government as it evolves. So, the people who are saying that there should be more total forces, it seems to me, foreign forces, it seems to me are probably not right. We'll find out over time. At least at the moment, it is the unanimous view of every commander that General Abizaid has talked to. I'm sure you can find somebody who doesn't agree with it somewhere, that won't be hard because no one ever looks for 100%. But at least at the moment that is the best judgement of the coalition military authorities, and I accept that and believe in correct. Lord Robertson: Can I just briefly add, in terms of general transformation, that it cannot be simply seen as sort of some buzzword that has to do with technology. Of course transformation has to do with using new technologies against new threats in the future, but we see it, and Ministers today have agreed, we have to see it in terms of flexibility and agility against asymmetric and unconventional threats. You know, one of what I consider to be a key achievement during my term of office as Secretary General was the creation of Supreme Allied Command transformation. And I did it not alone, but with Secretary Rumsfeld, because it ties in with Joint Forces Command in the United States of America. But what it does is to say, we need to get our armed forces fit and ready and able to meet the security challenges of future, in order to ensure that people will remain as safe as they feel now. We've actually got plenty of people in uniform. In the non-U.S. countries, it's one and a half million regular, and a million on top of that of reservists. With the vast majority of them being still configured for territorial defence when there is no extra-territorial enemy. Now so long as you have so many unusable soldiers, then taxpayers are being ripped off. It is a bad bargain for the taxpayers when they expect usable, deployable, survivable, well-equipped troops to be available to deal with each and every crisis that they are called upon to deal with. And yet we don't have them. So we are graduating our ambitions according to what we can deliver. And I think sometimes there's a danger that ambition severely outpaces the ability to deliver on it. But more and more of the Defence Ministers today, and indeed last week at the EU meeting, were saying, we have to get more deployable soldiers, and we're willing to make the changes that will allow for more of our forces to be deployable. That's transformation. That's what it's all about. Q: Secretary Rumsfeld, as you know there is a growing opposition to Turkish troops deployment in Iraq, not only from the Kurds but also from the Iraqi Governing Council. How do you see this? Are they challenging your policy, the U.S. policy, and how are you going to handle this? Rumsfeld: One would hope, skilfully. I'm not sure that you properly characterized the situation, with all respect. The Iraqi Governing Council, I do not believe, has had a vote opposing Turkish troops in Iraq. There have been one or maybe two members of the Iraqi Governing Council who have opined that they might prefer that that not be the case. But to my knowledge, there has not been a full action of any type by the Council, unless there's something I don't know. You think there has been? Q: Yes, because according to all reports, they decided unanimously, and also the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Naji Sabri, said many times and only yesterday in London, said very clearly that they oppose, and he's the Foreign Minister. Rumsfeld: I think I'm right. If I'm wrong, I apologize to everybody, but I believe I'm right that the Council has not acted. Does anyone here know that they have, or haven't? The government's understanding is that I'm correct. (Speakers overlap) Rumsfeld: Just a minute, just a minute. Second, your question said there's growing opposition. It's not clear to me that that's the case at all. Let me describe the circumstances. The circumstance is the United States has roughly 130 000 troops there. We have 32 other countries that have varying numbers of troops. Those troops are going to have to rotate out at some point. They're not going to stay there in perpetuity. They're going to stay there for a period, and then be replaced. And the total level will depend on how successful we are in increasing the number of Iraqis. During this period, the Coalition Provisional Authority has the responsibility for providing security in the country. We have to do that in the way that we believe is best. And what I'm sure Jerry Bremer is doing, Ambassador Bremer, and General Abizaid, is working with the Iraqis, and working with the other coalition countries to find a way that the offer, as I understand it, by the Turkish government, to provide some troops, can be done in a way that's satisfactory to Turkey, satisfactory to General Abizaid, and satisfactory to the key people in the Iraqi Governing Council. And I have a strong suspicion that in whatever period of time, some days, some weeks, some period of time, we'll find it all works out. Q: (inaudible) Although the Corona(?) scenario this morning was hypothetical, it was not so hypothetical. You put it right in the Mediterranean. That is something like a forecast, it's a message, and Greece is another state that has a special interest on that? Rumsfeld: I'm sorry to have to keep doing this to these questioners. You're wrong. It was hypothetical, it was not a forecast, and it was not a message. You have to put it someplace, where would you have liked to have had it. Q: (inaudible) (Laughter) Rumsfeld: Oh, fine, next time we'll try that. Q: In less than two weeks, there will be the conference for the reconstruction in Iraq in Madrid. But the time passes and the UN resolution has not already approved. How serious do you think that the fact that the resolution has not been approved, how can that affect the results of the conference. And besides, you think that the Europeans should make more effort, in economical terms, in money, as you are providing now? Rumsfeld: Well, I've been out here for a couple of days, so I'm not as current as I might be as to what's taking place in New York and, with respect to Secretary Powell and the discussions that are taking place on the resolution. I don't know the answer to your question, as to what effect it might or might not have. My guess is that it might have somewhat more effect on troop proposals than it would on donors. But I don't know that for sure. It could have an effect on donors, when you think about the international lending organizations, I would think, more than individual countries. The donors conference, as you suggest, is going to be held in, I believe, Madrid, Spain, later this month. And we have thus far, I'm told very good response from countries and we are certainly... We believe that the basic task of rebuilding Iraq belongs to the Iraqis. And our task, our role, really, is to get them started. And we believe that...we're happy as a country to, and the Congress I'm sure will be passing some funds to assist Iraq. The Iraqis have funds of their own, which will be coming when they get their oil revenues up, and in addition we believe that the international community has a big interest in seeing that Iraq is successful. So we believe that over time, we'll find that there will be international donors, there already have been some numbers of many hundreds of millions of dollars that have been donated in one way or another by various countries around the world, and I suspect we'll find that that number will grow over time as the Department of State and Department of Treasury work with other countries to increase it. Before we close this off, I would like to say this is the Secretary General's last informal NATO meeting. He has another Ministerial meeting or two in Brussels, but we are very pleased to have him here in the United States, he has done an absolutely first-rate job for this Alliance, and we are grateful. Thank you, Sir. Lord Robertson: Thank you very much.
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